This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Is the U.S. President Still the Most Powerful Man in the World?

In 2008 I still felt the American elections were crucial to the entire world because of the aura of the United States and its sheer military might.

Difficult as it will be for most Americans to admit, and notwithstanding our thousand bases around the world, that is no longer true.

The hopeless wars we are fighting are only one piece of evidence. Every week brings new events that usually however do not make it into the mainstream media. Last week if you happen to be an RT viewer you would have learned that China and Nicaragua are planning to cut a new canal through Central America - right in our own back yard. (Yet we still do not recognize the government of Cuba....)

There’s no point in reiterating how low our reputation has fallen abroad, especially in the Arab world, but let me just say here that I’m getting pretty tired of hearing the media imply, as MSNBC just did, that the 100 point drop in the Dow at opening was due to the financial situation in Europe. One of the best kept secrets these days is that the Euro crisis is a direct consequence of the irresponsible behavior of Wall Street that brought on the 2008 crash.

I’ll be writing more often once I finish proofing the paperback edition of my memoir: ‘Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel: A Journey from the Cold War to the Arab Spring’.

Welcome to Otherjones!

As announced a month ago, henceforth I will post all my blogs here, abandoning websites that support their editors, but not their writers. I'm looking for thirty readers willing to contribute $10 a month each. They will receive an article every day in their inbox.

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’, as Chris Hedges puts it, may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

My goal is to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.
Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

By clicking on the Donate button, you will be able to contribute via Paypal or your credti card. Thanks!
P.S. I encourage you to review the archive, by clicking first on the year triangle, then on that of each month. You will find many posts from recent years still relevant today.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN did nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons
why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover, getting a unique window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who never appear on our own msm.

I intend to try, insofar as my time permits, to signal news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own, many of which are significant.